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Flashback: 1930’s

Chewonki founder Clarence Allen wrote about his young campers in the August 3, 1930, Camp Chronicle. His thoughts make clear that, despite many changes on Chewonki Neck, not the least of which is that girls, as well as boys, now enjoy Camp Chewonki, the camp’s essence is much the same as it was 89 years ago.

“One must be badly out of tune with the symphonies of boyhood if he fails to get the music and rhythm of our everyday camp life. The tempo is pretty apt to be forte, rarely pianissimo, and always with a lively tilt.

“There is adventure in the air which even a very wearied mind cannot fail to get. One of our seven-year-olds out in a lean-to for the night, provided thrill and adventure sufficient to quicken the pulse of the counselor lying beside him. At three o’clock in the morning a piercing cry of ‘Ed, Ed, there’s a bear in the lean-to” required all of Ed’s assurance until his sleepy mind was wakened to calm his young friend and himself.

“Every new experience a boy has is apt to be vibrant with an element of adventure. A sailboat before the wind, a quickened rush of water along the canoe, noises of the night or almost any noises at all are sufficient to generate a tale of adventure that leaves us open-mouthed with wonder at the inventiveness and fanciful turn a boy’s mind may take, but it makes a good story and many a time he believes it himself when others do not.

“I feel certain that those boys respond inwardly to the fundamental elements of nature. Here the wind means so much more than it does in their lives in the city, the showers that come and go, sunshine and moonlight and the tides are all at work on those unformed minds.”